I'm moving into the next phase of my life: the Rascal has a new owner, I'm living in the states again, and I'm about to start a new career.  

​But it has been a while since I gave you an update, so I figured I'd give you a rundown on what I've been up to, what I'll be getting into next, and what sort of new adventures the Rascal will be charging into.

Thus, I listed the Rascal for sale in Chile and waited for a suitor to arrive.  A few folks made overtures in her direction from Santiago and a handful of tire kickers came by to fondle her bulwarks and tap dance upon her deck.  None of these suitors proved worthy, however, and the weeks continued to pass.  I put these idle weeks to good use with a number of glorious excursions and adventures - both in Patagonia and with a few forays to the northern desert.  

With the Rascal sold and a few duffel bags of my belongings packed up, I hopped on a flight back to the states.  I'd gone a couple years without seeing a lot of my friends and family, so I decided a road trip was in order.  I flew back to Utah and that same day I purchased the glorious vehicle that was to be my partner for another tremendous adventure!

Donna (as she's named) is a 1987 Mercedes 300d that has been converted to run on used fryer oil.  I knew I'd be covering a lot of territory during the road trip that I dubbed the "Great American Friendship Tour" (GAFT for short) so getting good mileage was important to me.  Donna gets about 30 miles to the gallon and when she's running on waste vegetable oil, driving is nearly free.  I like to say that she's powered by the obesity of North America instead of the dead dinosaurs everyone else fills their tank with.  

Thus, I proceeded to pilot myself around North America in a big figure 8, sliding on down to New Orleans and Florida, making my way north along the east coast, stopping for a spell in New England, cruising back across the country to UT, onward to San Fran, up into the Pacific Northwest, and then back around to Wyoming and Colorado again.  

I'd been scouting for job prospects throughout the GAFT and when I got to the trip's end, I had a number of leads to follow up on.  During the course of my voyage, I lived a wonderfully simple life. I relied on the wind for transportation, on the sun for electricity, and on the sea for sustenance. It felt really good to reduce my impact on the world around me, and I decided to make it my mission to help others do the same. ​

Thus my job search centered around alternative energy / energy storage / alternative transportation.  I spent a couple months interviewing with different companies all around the country and, rather than look down on my time on the Rascal, most employers were quite impressed and positive about it.
​
I eventually found the right fit with a company in Vermont called Renewable NRG that mostly focuses on wind.  I'll be working as a product manager and I'll be traveling about 25% of the time to Europe, South America, and Asia to meet with customers and suppliers.  I'm eager to dive in, learn more about the industry, and make my mark.

A lot of folks have asked what it is like to return to the "real world" after an extended adventure and, in the beginning, it all felt pretty bizarre.  Everyone was always in a rush to get somewhere.  The weather didn't affect me much on a day-to-day basis.  My bed didn't rock around at night.  But little-by-little bizarre became normal again and I've settled back into life on land.  I've had the luxury of being able to take it slow and I reassimilated at my own pace, spending plenty of time in nature.  

While I've reaccustomed myself to life in the USA, I'll always take with me the lessons, skills, and mindset that I acquired on the Rascal. 

​More than two years ago, I quit my job, sold all my belongings, and bought a sailboat with the goal of skiing in the fjords of Chilean Patagonia.  Since then, I managed to sail down the west coast of North and South America.  I’ve learned a lot of important skills, I’ve met some incredible people, and I’ve seen more beautiful things than I ever thought possible.  I lived my dream every single day and I finally achieved all my goals a couple months ago.  I’m a very different person than the kid that stepped off the dock at the beginning of this voyage.
 
My life is starting to pivot in the direction of something new.  I’m not sure what the next chapter will hold, but I’m ready to tackle it with a big bear hug and an open mind. 
 
The Voyage of the Rascal has officially come to a close.

​We pulled into sight of the volcano in late afternoon and maneuvered into a snug anchorage across the fjord.  There is a little village that sits at the base of the volcano with a gas station and a few stores and hotels.  It had been more than a week since our time in Puerto Aguirre and we decided a trip into town for some fresh supplies would be a good idea.  

It is possible to drive to the village of Hornopiren and I’d asked some friends in the area if anyone had ever skied it.  I got mixed responses, but the gist seemed to be that there was (or had been) some sort of rudimentary trail up to snow line.  I never managed to talk to anyone that’d actually been on the trail nor anyone who was sure where it was exactly.  Jess and I figured that chatting with folks around town would likely yield some better insight. 
 
We walked around to various stores, buying fresh meat, veggies, and bread, asking store owners if they’d ever climbed the volcano or knew anyone that had.  All of them seemed to agree that it wasn’t possible to climb it at this time of year and nobody was sure if a trail existed or where it was.  A little daunted in spirit, but not having given up, I happened to strike up a conversation with a high-school-aged kid that was drinking beers down by the river.  He painted a more optimistic view of our prospects, “Of course its possible to climb it, I did it just last summer and the trail is right over there!”  He pointed off into the distance and smiles spread across our faces.  We knew that the following day would be our only weather window for quite a while, so we decided to pack all of our bags that evening and try for the summit the following day.  

​Dawn broke clear and we chowed down on some monstrous breakfast burritos, pulled up our crab trap (that was absolutely brimming with tasty morsels), and piled in the dinghy for the trip across the fjord.  

​We locked the Superhighway to the long pier at the edge of town and found ourselves a shuttle ride out to the trailhead.  The driver seemed to have been there before and wished us luck as he dropped us off.  Hornopiren Volcano is right at the edge of a national park, but isn’t actually within the park boundary, a fact that we hadn’t grasped at this point in our adventure.  There were a handful of farms scattered through the woods and as we shouldered our loads a middle-aged guy came ambling out of a house near the national-park guard shack (which was vacant).  He looked something like an older Chilean version of A.C. Slater (complete with an exceptional mullet) and he had the thickest countryside accent I’ve ever heard.
 
It took us a while to figure out that he wasn’t the park ranger and we told him of our intentions to ski the volcano.  Deciphering his Spanish was truly a challenge, but he was concerned about the wind, saying that it would be too strong on top of the volcano.  He also kept saying something about the top of the trail, but he was using an adjective I wasn’t familiar with and I couldn’t quite figure it out.  The best I could tell, the top of the trail still wasn’t quite ‘ready’ or ‘clean’, and I was figuring that perhaps some trees had fallen across it during the winter months.  We eventually parted ways, likely both a bit confused, and we continued up the trail that lead to the ‘park’.  Along the way, we passed a lumberjack carrying a big axe on his shoulder and nodded our greetings.  I remarked to Jess that it was pretty cool that people could still make a living in this day and age with an axe and their bare hands.  A pair of sleek black cattle dogs trotted along at his heels.
 
After a quarter mile of following the trail to the ‘park’, it became clear that this trail was heading away from the volcano, not towards it.  We decided to loop back and ask for some more advice from our mulleted amigo.  The two dogs announced our arrival and A.C. popped out of his cottage with the lumberjack fellow we’d passed before and started reiterating that the trail wasn’t ready.  I figured that a trail, no matter what condition it was in, would be a piece of cake compared with the bushwhacking I’d done over the course of the last few months and asked if we could give it a shot despite the condition of the trail.  They then made us a proposition – they’d lead us a little way up the trail for 25,000 pesos – about $40 USD per person.  “To the snow line?” I tried to clarify.  No they said, not that far.  This didn’t seem like much of a bargain to me – shouldn’t the trail be free, I wondered?  I knew 25,000 pesos would be equivalent to several days work for these guys, and I didn’t want to be rude, but I felt like they were fleecing the gringos.  “Can’t you just point us in the right direction?” I asked innocently.  The lumberjack relented to 10,000 pesos per person and we decided to bite.  The conversation, which had been quite formal and strained up until this point suddenly became jovial and friendly.  We handed over the cash and we started making our way up the hillside. 
 
The lumberjack led the way, axe over shoulder, Jess and I carrying all of our ski gear in the middle, and old A.C. Slater brought up the rear with a machete and some instrument that looked like a scythe.  As we wound our way up through cow pastures and into the woods, I started wondering just what we were getting ourselves into.  My spidey sense told me these guys were good guys, but it definitely felt a little dubious being escorted by these armed Chilean guys who were obviously built of tougher stock than we were.  I struck up a conversation with the lumberjack, whose Spanish was entirely less accented than his friend’s and it was at this point that we realized that the trail wasn’t in the park, but instead wound up through their private land.  He’d lived there his entire life, was of mixed german ancestry, and when he wasn’t lumbering, he served as caretaker for a wealthy Italian guy that had a mansion hidden in the woods.
 
The trail was going in exactly the right direction, straight up the volcano, and as we ascended the forest got more and more dense, the trail less and less clear. Our ski tips were getting caught on occasional branches and our ski boots clanked around on our backs.  There were several junctions where the route wasn’t exactly clear (rather more like a maze, I’d say), but the lumberjack knew exactly where he was going and his dogs obviously had been up the trail before as well.  I asked him as much as I could about the rest of the climb and what the trail looked like.  Apparently there are fewer side trails further up the hillside.  He also mentioned that another woman around the other side of the mountain would guide tourists to the top in the summer for 25,000 pesos and she apparently had some sort of trail as well.  What a great bargain we’ve struck, I think to myself – little did I know what kind of sufferfest we’d gotten ourselves into. 
 
After perhaps 45 minutes of uphilling with these guys, we busted through some dense thicket and came upon an old lava flow cutting down through the forest.  Parts of it were overgrown with forest, but some parts had been thoroughly scoured by a creek that was all dried up when we arrived.  “Perfect,” I think, “We just need to continue following this lava flow, it’ll surely bring us to the top!”  Our ‘guides’ said that its only 'perhaps' 2 more hours to snowline up the lava flow and wished us luck, and went back to return to their work down in the pastures.  Jess and I shifted around our loads, striped off a layer (as the sun had gotten quite warm by this hour), and started working our way up the lava flow in earnest.  No photos exist of the next six hours of my life, but I can assure you the memory of that bushwhack will forever be burned into my memory. 
 
From the point where the guides dropped us off, the trail immediately become much more dense.  It was so narrow and un-trafficked that any opening between trees could be the proper route and it took us a while to decide which way we ought to go.  The openings that I expected from the stream that wound down the lava flow disappeared in some places and at other times the trail diverges from from the stream for no apparent reason.  At some points, the trees above us were so low that we literally had to crawl on our stomachs to shimmy through.  It would have been slow going even without skis, boots, and camera gear on our backs, and we were making rather pitiful progress. 
 
Certain parts of the trail turned into loose basalt scree and then all of a sudden the open scree field would turn into a cliff that required a little bit of rock climbing to get around.  At one such cliff, Jess started wondering whether she was really game for this adventure or not.  I reckoned it was a good spot to stop for lunch and with the benefit of some food in our bellies and plenty of daylight left, she decided to continue up.  Our skis continued to be attacked by branches and vines on all sides and we stopped again to redistribute gear a bit which helped our speed and lowered our consternation considerably.  The trail was little more than a whisper at this point and in some places it was really more like a low tunnel than anything.  It felt like we were ascending through an enormous living game of chutes and ladders, except there were no ladders and we had to climb up the chutes instead of sliding down them.
 
After another hour or two of climbing, Jess seemed to find some sort of steely resolve that had been buried deep down inside her and stopped questioning the insanity of continuing.  While it was definitely a heinous climb, I’ve got some sort of masochistic love for this sort of thicketeering and I felt rather ‘at home’ in these woods.  Around 2pm I checked my gps and found that we only had perhaps a half mile of bushwhacking left until we hit snowline.  The closer we got to the top, the more the hiking turned into rock climbing, with plenty of awkward mantles (not easy with a couple pairs of skis on your back), and nothing but vines and scrub brush to hold on with.  In a few zones, waterfalls totally obscured the path and we were forced to climb up scrubby trees to bypass them.  Patches of snow eventually started to show up, hidden in the shadows from the previous week’s storm.  Loose, chossy scree rounded out the scene.
 
The last couple hundred yards were particularly heinous, but snowline was finally in sight, peeking through the shrubbery here and there like a shy girl at a middle school dance.  As our boots finally sunk into the long-awaited crunch of snow, Jess looked up at me and the grimaces we’d worn all morning finally gave way to smiles.  We’d made it.  Snow was familiar.  The rest would be easy.

​It was around 3pm at this point and it’d taken us more than 6 hours to bushwhack up to snow line.  We quickly switched over into our ski boots and started booting our way up the summit cone.  We were easily moving two or three times faster than we had been in the woods and it felt good to be so efficient all of a sudden.  The hour was late, however, and I was questioning the wisdom of trying to make it all the way to the summit given the distance we still had to cover to get back down to town. 
 
Jess and I traded leads during the boot up and were pleased to find that the snow was stable and soft.  At this point, Jess was totally focused and we decided to take the risk of walking back in the dark if it meant getting to stand on top of this nasty rascal of a volcano.  

​The views all around us were absurdly beautiful and we made really good time in the final summit push, with adrenaline pumping and our weary bones momentarily forgetting the gauntlet we’d been through to get here.  

​We let out some victorious hoots and hollers and scanned the incredible panorama that surrounded us.  

​To the north sat Yates Volcano, looking glacier covered and surly.  To our east, the snow-capped Andes stretched out into Argentina, just a few short miles away.  Across the crater to the west, the mountains slowly disappeared in Seno Reloncavi and the low islands and farm country of Chiloe.  To our south sat Isla Pelada and the little anchorage the Rascal was nestled in.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time to gawk and we quickly put our skis on for the descent.

​I made a long, fast ski cut to test the slope and found that the snow was even better than we expected – soft corn that was just starting to think about refreezing.  Soft, but not too soft.  My short little Salomons really ate it up.

​It was tough to concentrate on skiing with the incredible scenery all around us.  It felt like we were on a different planet.  

​We made relatively quick work of the descent and were soon back at treeline with big smiles on our faces.  

​A celebratory beer was definitely in order, we decided, and we each drank an Escudo as we changed back into hiking shoes. ​

The bushwhacking descent was much less painful than the ascent had been and the victorious feeling of having stood on the summit definitely took the edge off.  On the way up, we’d had to fight the bush as well as gravity to make progress, but on the way down the bushes helped to counteract the effects of gravity and in lots of places we could grab onto them to avoid falling or getting out of control.  It was still slow going and the hours ticked away as we made our way down.  At times, I felt like a big, cantankerous bear rumbling through the brush and the birds all made a racket of warning as I charged my way down the mountain with Jess in my wake. 
 
Light was finally fading as we arrived back to the pasture country surrounding the lumberjack’s house.  The two cattle dogs broadcasted the presence of two strange creatures emerging from the woods and our two ‘guides’ were immediately hurrying over to us.  I’m sure we looked like a couple of absolute lunatics after all the bushwhacking we’d done and they looked us over with wide eyes.  After the exceptional amount of time it’d taken, they feared we were hurt or dead and they were really relieved to see that we were unscathed.  We mentioned that the trail was a bit rougher than we’d expected (which was met with knowing grins), and they seemed a bit astonished that we’d actually made it to the summit. 
 
We bid them farewell and started trundling our way back down the road towards town.  After a couple of miles of star gazing and slow walking, some friendly folks driving in our direction stopped to pick us up in a small sedan (despite the fact that we looked like a couple of dirty yetis) and we packed all of our ski stuff on top of ourselves in the back seat.  They were kind enough to drop us directly at the dock and we quickly motored our way back across the fjord. 
 
As I stripped off all my ski gear in the cockpit of the Rascal, I found there was an incredible amount of plant matter, rocks, and volcanic dirt lodged in my hair, my boots, my pack, and my clothes.  It felt like the mountain had become a part of me and I’d become a part of the mountain too.  Jess and I left a lot of blood, sweat, and tears behind on that volcano and it felt like an incredible accomplishment to be able to finally check it off the list after staring up at it for so many months from the fjords below.  Mission accomplished!

After finally accomplishing the main goal of the Voyage of the Rascal (skiing from the boat!), and after spending an idyllic week in Laguna San Rafael, it was time to start sailing northward again.  We were a bit worried that we'd get pinned down with northerly winds, but the return trip was relatively casual - we even had time for a few bonus adventures!

We woke up to another crystal clear day and a fresh layer of ice on the deck.  It was finally the appointed day for our departure, but we had to wait for an ebb tide before we could make our way down the river (the current would be too strong otherwise) so we had all morning (or so we thought) to spend in the laguna.  Having realized this the night before, Clint and I decided that it would be pretty damn cool to put his extra thick wetsuit to use and do some diving around the icebergs.

​I went over to Karma to suit up and then we took off across the glassy early-morning waters of the laguna to a suitable-looking berg.  I’d only ever done free diving before, but Clint had a hookah (like scuba diving except you have a line to the surface instead of a tank on your back), so we decided to put it to use and I was able to stay down for quite a while, checking out the nooks and crannies of the berg.  Visibility wasn’t great, thanks to the glacial sediment tilled up in the water, but I got to do a fair bit of exploring, and I can certify that the amount of ice below the waterline is indeed much larger than that which pokes out at the top.  

It was definitely a cool introduction to diving and with the thick wetsuit, it wasn't as cold as you'd expect (though it definitely wasn't warm either.  ​

The day remained dead calm and as we made our way towards the exit of the Laguna we collected a bunch of bergy bits to fill up our icebox.  

There wasn't a cloud in the sky all day and we finally got a good look at San Valentin - a 4000m peak that absolutely towers over all of the other surrounding mountains.  

Up an adjacent river valley, you could just make out glacier that was falling down towards the sea.  You could tell there was a river that lead up to it, but the tide didn't quite reach the calving edge of the glacier.  My nautical charts made it seem like you could navigate up the river, but the guide books mentioned that the anchorage at the river outlet was no good.  I was intrigued, but we decided to pass it by for the time being.  

A blazing Patagonian sunset ushered us into our anchorage and we spent the night anchored in a sheltered cove beside an abandoned sawmill.  ​

It was calm once again when we awoke, and I was planning on heading north, but I couldn't manage to get that other glacier out of my head.  I had the anchor half way up before I finally decided to go for it.  We made a big bacon-and-egg breakfast and jumped into the superhighway for a reckon trip to the river outlet.  

The wind slowly built as we were crossing the straight and by the time we got to the other side, we were fully surfing down waves (which is a rarity with two people in the Superhighway) and the wind wasn't showing any signs of abating. We soon crossed a line in the water where the cloudy river water (that was full of glacial sediment) mixed with the cold, clear seawater.  We had the poor fortune of arriving right at low tide and the delta at the end of the river got shallow really quickly.  We couldn't see more than a few inches through the cloudiness, but our trusty propeller soon found the bottom with a horrendous clanking noise.  I knew it was only a mile or two up to the glacier, but there was no way to route find and we didn't want to completely destroy the prop in the process.  I think with high tide or perhaps more time to pick your way through, it would be feasible, but we didn't have either, so we decided to head back to the boat.

The return trip was entirely less fun than the initial trip and the wind had picked up to 15+ kts against the tide running in the opposite direction, which translated into 4-5ft waves.  We spent the following 45 minutes getting completely douched by each passing wave and we were both completely drenched, shivering, and unhappy by the time we got back to the Rascal.  We lit a fire, made some tea and settled down in for a nap and a warmup.  

A half hour later, the current had flipped and Karma happened to be sailing by the anchorage.  At this point, if we wanted to continue north, the current would be running against us through the second pass and we decided to let Karma test the waters before we charged out to do battle.  They reported 3-4 kts of current through the choke, which is the limit of the Rascal's ability, but we decided to fire up the engine and go for it.  With the engine racing, we just made it through and quickly covered the next few miles to the next anchorage.

With bad weather in the forecast, we decided to spend several days there, going on little adventures with Clint and Reina, collecting our wits, making huge delicious dinners, and working on boat chores.   

When the weather finally broke, we started making our way north through the fjords again.  We took a different route on that we had on the way down and the weather was super variable, changing from dead calms to strong gusty headwinds back to dead calms and eventually to strong, consistent tail winds.  The territory we passed through was breathtaking and we passed through some cool anchorages along the way.  

The time had finally come to say goodbye as Clint and Reina were headed south towards Tierra Del Fuego and Jess and I had to make our way back north to Puerto Montt.  We had dinner on the Rascal for a change that night and polished off the remainder of the wine that we'd been carefully nursing for the last week.  Hugs ensued and we planned a rendezvous a couple months later.

The next day we sailed to the tiny island outpost town of Puerto Aguirre.  Its in the middle of a huge archipelago and there aren't any other towns nearby.  We had a great day of sailing to get there and our anchorage was nice and snug, with exceptional views of the surrounding volcanos.  

We charged into town as fast as our legs could carry us and felt like aliens exploring a new world after almost a month at sea without resupply.  We chatted with the friendly folks at the navy office, walked across the street for a cold beer and a big ole plate of steak a lo pobre, and started buying provisions at one of the handful of stores in town.  We'd very nearly run out of fresh vegetables, meat, and bread so the resupply was sorely needed.

We trudged back out to the Rascal's anchorage well after dark and on the row back to the boat we were treated to an absolutely stupendous display of phosphorescence.  It was like the entire sea was aflame and the movement of the superhighway was enough to ignite a green bonfire on all sides.  That, combined with a sky full of twinkling stars, was almost more than we could handle and we spent a long time rowing in circles and marveling at the natural beauty all around us.  

We still had plenty of provisioning to do, so we took the dinghy in to the municipal dock the next morning to load it up with food, wine, beer, fuel, and any other little treats we could find in the nooks and crannies of Puerto Aguirre.  

We had been thinking about spending another night there, but a perfect south breeze had sprung up, our larder was once again full, and it seemed like a shame to waste a perfect sailing day.  We hauled in the anchor, raised the spinnaker, and started threading our way through the islands once again.  It was a really warm day and we decided later that afternoon that some rum-pineapple drinks were in order.  

I can hardly imagine a nicer afternoon of sailing and as we pulled into a old favorite anchorage, a gorgeous pastel-y sunset decided to grace us with its presence.

Another day of perfect downwind sailing brought us to the exit of the archipelago and it was once again time to cross the Gulf of Corcovado.  We had a big feast (braised buffalo turkey leg pasta with whiskey gingers!) from our new stores of fresh food that night, played a few games of cribbage, and prepared for a really big day of sailing.  A fish hawk came and visited us while we were lounging around on deck and we had an absolutely stupendous view of the towering volcanos of the surrounding cordillera.  We could just make out Corcovado, Melimoyu, and Yanteles from our anchorage.  

We left around 3am the next morning and I set a course by Orion's Belt.  There wasn't too much boat traffic and a nice following breeze pushed us along at 4-5 kts.  Eventually light started dancing along the skyline and the Andes slowly carved their place out of the horizon.  

The glorious sunset and the extra 20 miles made our early departure totally worth it and the wind slowly picked up as we continued northward.  Similar to our last transit of the Gulf of Corcovado, the tidal current was running against the wind all morning and some truly hellacious waves started building.  I decided to head up front to pole out the jib and Carly (the mechanical windvane that steers the boat) picked that exact moment to do a really bad job steering.  We ended up sideways to the wave train and a big 10 ft breaker struck us square on the beam.  It was enough to tip us over 60 or 70 degrees and I ended up getting almost completely submerged as the wave broke over us.  The inside of the cabin was also an absolute mess as well, with some extra sticky murta jam mixed with shards of broken glass scattered everywhere.  To top things off, Poseidon must've decided to break open the dry-goods locker and a healthy heap of quinoa had exploded over the top of the sharp, sticky mess.  

Once I got all of that cleaned up, it was time for breakfast and a couple of breakfast burritos improved our disposition considerably.  Volcan Corcovado got closer and closer as we continued to tick off miles and by lunch time, you could see the vents spewing hot gasses that're scattered around the western side.  

A halo around the sun that afternoon heralded a change in the weather in the next couple of days.  

We knocked out another good stretch of distance the following day, which brought us to the entrance to Pumalin Park, the national park championed and founded by the late Doug Tompkins, an exceptional conservationist and an environmental visionary.  Tompkins bought up a bunch of pristine Chilean wilderness that was at risk of irresponsible development and donated it back to the Chilean people in the form of a brilliantly designed national park.  

We pulled in to a snug little anchorage near the ferry landing ramp and found that a fishing boat had beat us to the punch.  They were kind enough to let us raft up to them (there wouldn't have been enough space for the both of us otherwise) and we traded them a 6 pack of Escudo for a bunch of shellfish they'd just plucked off of the ocean floor.  They even threw in a dozen "locos" which are something of a cross between an enormous snail and an abalone.  They have a pretty damn intimidating look about them and the texture (extra damn chewy) is pretty tough to get past.  Jess was valiant enough to try one, but elected not to partake in the finished dish.  

We moved a couple miles away the next day to a sheltered little nook cut into the coastline.  Despite how close we were to shore, we were still in 150ft of water which goes to show how absurdly deep these fjords are.  

We spent that afternoon exploring the park and drinking out of pristine mountain streams.  I've seen lots of different towns and buildings in Chile that make use of small hydropower installations and Parque Pumalin is no exception.  They're beautiful systems because they run 24/7 (unlike solar or wind) and unlike large hydro projects with big dams, they have minimal impact on the surrounding ecosystem.  All you need is water and a change in elevation, which Chile happens to have in spades!  Most have a small diversion which takes a bit of the stream and the turbines themselves are just big, old electrical motors running in reverse.  

The following morning we caught up on our journals and photo editing and watched a movie while the rain fell outside.  By midday, the sky had cleared and we decided to try and make a few miles before sunset.  We got out of our nook, found the wind was on our nose, blowing up the fjord, and the engine promptly coughed, sputtered, and died.  I left Jess up in the cockpit to tack back and forth up the narrow fjord while I dove down below to investigate in the engine compartment.  After a half hour of filter cleaning, line bleeding, diesel tank filling, and more line bleeding, we were back in action and pulled into the village of Buill just before sunset.  A big, homemade chicken noodle soup rounded out the evening and we slept like babies.  

The next morning we rounded the Huequi Peninsula and got a great view of the glaciers and volcanos to the north.  

Eventually we threaded our way up through Hornopiren Fjord and our next ski objective slowly materialized into sight - Hornopiren Volcano!

The approach alone involved a Herculean effort of bushwhacking, trail building, and rock climbing, but alas, thats another story for another day!